Changes afoot

You guys, I don't know what to do. I am so sick of this lockdown nonsense, and also, I realize I'm not being particularly interesting or funny in this space anymore. It's all dance right now, and I honestly don't know how many of you are interested in that. All 16 of you that are registered to read this thing.

But I feel the compulsion to continue having a blog. Call it a habit after 7 years.

So. I just signed up for this.

Fair warning, this may happen. I'm figuring out the logistics of transferring everything here to there and then making any Scotsman-related entries private so his ex-wife can't see, if she even still cares at this point.

I don't know. Do any of you even care anymore? Thoughts? Concerns? Questions?

Yep, we're going with lockdown.

It's just the way it's going to be for awhile, folks.

I'm not cheating on you, I swear...

...But in this time of busyness and ADD, I've started tumbling.

Sorry! I know. But it's fast, quick, and filled with lots of images.

Proper writing and photo blogging to return here, I promise. But in the meantime, you can see my super quick thoughts here.

Stop looking at me that way. Stop it, I said. I don't love Tumblr more than you. I don't. It's just hard for me to write long things and recaps right now. I know, I know, I KNOW.

Look, they have things to follow like Fuck Yeah Men in Suits and Heck Yeah Nerdy Men. COME ON. I CAN'T RESIST THAT. And also I'm being exposed to a lot of cool art and photography there. So it's good for me.

And again, I swear I'm not leaving you. You're still my number one, baby.

Barleby Snopes!

I have 7 (SEVEN) photos appearing in the new issue of Bartleby Snopes! My super amazing writer friend Sarah has a brilliant piece, "Koala Tide," appearing in the same issue (it was Story of the Month, dontcha know). You can download it here.

And guys, thanks for all your help, advice, and voting. 'Preciate ya.

Look what I just did —

I up and changed my template.

I'm having mixed feelings about this. The sidebar links are way too small for my liking. I feel like the lighter blues are hard to see. And there's an awful lot of...brown going on here.

This all came about because I was trying to figure out how to put a link to older posts at the bottom of my page — which if you scroll down to the bottom of my page, you can see I still haven't figured out how to do. Coding smarties, help a girl out! — and I decided to do something a wee bit drastic. This is a template I've had forever, leftover from my now defunct Photo Fiction blog. The woman who designed it, Miss Zoot, no longer designs templates, but I remember she had a similar theme to this one, but in sweet red and maroon colors. What I wouldn't give for that template now.

ANYWAY, I'm trying this out for a few days. I still have the old template all tucked away for posterity, so it may come back. But Lordy, that green had been around for a long time. A change of some sort had to happen. What I DO love about this template, is the rad borders around photos. Check it:


(photo of Melissa Lynch, from my brother's show Skin Deep)

See? Love that.

Anyway, we'll see how long this template lasts. If you spot any good looking templates in your travels, send them my way.

And oh, you guys. I have so much I've been meaning to post about. But silly me, I foolishly thought that no longer being in grad school meant I would have free time. Instead it means that I now have a billion people I must socialize with because I was ignoring them the entire time I was being studious. I promise you all: A real update soon.

Photo mosaic of the day

Hahahaha... Sarah just sent me today's questions, since she liked my previous love-filled post. Have at it, kids:




MOSAIC OF THE DAY

1. FIRST THOUGHT THIS MORNING
2. HOW YOU LIKE YOUR COFFEE
3. HOW YOU LIKE YOUR MEN
4. DREAM JOB
5. SPY NAME
6. IF I NAMED A NAIL POLISH AFTER YOU
7. WORD THAT DESCRIBES YOUR FAVORITE FRUIT
8. WHAT YOU WANT TO SMELL LIKE
9. WHAT YOU SMELL LIKE RIGHT NOW
10. LOCATION OF FIRST KISS
11. LOCATION OF LAST KISS
12. WHAT YOU WANT FOR CHRISTMAS

You can tell it's been a slow Friday.

Truth Bombs and Sparkle Brutal

Sarah finally gave me the link to her Tumblr page and it is epic. It's like the internet got drunk, covered itself in glitter, and is now yelling at me to come dance with it.

I should be clear that I only understand about half of it. But it's awesome.

You should go check it out.

Sarah is also one of those people who writes brilliant short stories and then I read them and I hate myself, all Damn, why didn't I write that? Her story Koala Tide was named February's story of the month on Bartleby Snopes.

One of my favorite things on Sarah's Tumblr is her question photo collages. Let me do one to help explain.




1- what is your biggest turnoff in a guy?
2- how about your favorite cartoon?
3- breakfast today?
4- animal which represents you on the weekends.
5- where did you lose your virginity?
6- what’s your favorite splurge?!
7- sexiest dead person in history?
8- bra color - now!
9- you’d love to sink into a big tub of _____
10- best gift someone has ever given you.
11- the impossible shoes of your dreams!
12- weapon of choice.

See? Fun for all!

ETA: Gah! The mosaic thing cut off my shoe photo. Check it out full size here.

Confessions of a Checkout Girl

Jezebel had an interesting post this weekend about Anna Sam, the author of the book The Tribulations of a Checkout Girl, who after graduating college returned to her job as a checkout girl to tide her over until she could land a job in publishing.

The post caught my attention because I spent 8 years working as a checkout girl/deli attendant at a mom & pop neighborhood grocery store when I was in high school and college. The job served me well – it forced my shy little bandgeek self to talk to complete strangers and forced me to develop an outgoing, friendly personality.

The post mostly talks about how nasty customers are to checkout girls, blaming the checkers when their coupons expire or when prices don't scan properly. I had one woman ream me out because we refused to discount her purposefully dented cans (it was store policy to send damaged merchandise back to the vendors, and the clanging sounds coming from aisle 3 gave me a pretty good clue that the cans had not arrived damaged) and when I politely offered to get her replacements for the dented cans, she called me a bitch and stomped out of the store, leaving an overflowing cart of groceries for me to return to the shelves.

Working in retail is a particular form of hell, second only to waiting tables, I imagine. You back aches, your feet hurt, the constant drone of the beep, beep, beep of the scan, the grouchy customers determined to find fault with whatever you're doing. If you've ever seen the movie Go, those opening scenes of Sarah Polley's character ringing up the harried woman who bitches her out about double coupons and how her bleach is bagged, well, I've been there. I've been the exasperated checkout girl with dead eyes working the double shift and politely asking you between clenched teeth if you want paper or plastic.

But one section of the post caught my eye:

"There are many difficult aspects to being a checkout girl that people probably don't realize; there is a lot of loneliness, stress, sadness, and frustration that comes through the lines, such as seeing an elderly man pay for 15 frozen 50¢ burritos with handfuls of warm change; having to tell a young mother with three sweet-faced children that WIC doesn't cover a specific cereal or type of juice and seeing her face fall as she realizes she has to put things back, and watching people wince as the totals add up on the computer screen. You can feel the stress of your customers; you get a sense of who they are by the items they continually buy, you can tell when your regulars are struggling when their orders go down or when they begin to switch from fancy brands to generics."

This is so true. Working long-term in a grocery store, especially in a non-chain neighborhood store where many people walk as opposed to drive, you quickly begin to develop a relationship with regular customers. You get somewhat intimate glances into their lives. Like the woman who every month would excitedly purchase a pregnancy test to only return sadly a few days later for tampons. Or the woman on WIC who, after 8 months on assistance, triumphantly high-fived me when she bought her first non-WIC order.

The one that sticks out the most in my mind was an elderly gentleman who came into the store nearly everyday. On Tuesdays he would do his regular grocery shopping. Most of it included typical old-man fair: Creamed corn, Rice-a-Roni, low-salt ham, the pre-made pot-pie from the deli and frozen dinners. Every other day of the week he would buy a newspaper, the discouted "meat ends" from the deli, and a can of dog food for his Irish setter, Lady. If I was working, he always came through my line. "How's Lady today?" I would always ask. "Just beautiful," he would always answer, usually following up with an account about how they had gone for a walk or she had seen a squirrel or some such story. "She's a rascal," he would always finish up. I gathered from the amount of food he bought and the way he doted on Lady that he lived alone and that she was his only companion. Early one morning, shortly after the store opened and I stood yawning at my register he entered into my line carrying only a newspaper and a package of meat ends. The synapses in my brain were not yet firing properly so I thoughtlessly asked, "No dog food today?" And with that he burst into tears, hunched over my conveyor belt and began sobbing. Between tears he managed to get out that he had woke up that morning to discover Lady had died in the middle of the night, while he had been sleeping. "I lost my Lady," he choked out to me. "I just don't know what to do." Neither did I, other than to pat his back and pass him tissues. A few years later he stopped coming into the store altogether, and I wonder if he had died or moved or gone into assisted living. I wish that I had known his name.

We had our regular weirdos, too. The schizophrenic who would come into the store and buy cans of Juicy Juice because they were the only ones "unregulated by the government" and would only pay in $2 bills. The homeless man who wandered into the store and urinated on a display of TastyKakes. The skeezey overweight "fireman" (we later found out he wasn't a fireman at all, just owned a lot of firefighter gear and wore it to impress people) who would come in and leer at all the girls while buying donuts. The religious woman who would pass us Jack Chick tracts with her money.

Working in the store provided a certain element of fun. A good number of my coworkers were also high school/college students and we spent a good amount of time on the clock dicking around. Races with shopping carts when it got slow, riding on the huge stock conveyor belt in the basement, making out in the milk cooler, water and suds fights in the sink room of the deli.

Best of all were the unpredictable times. Like when late one night lightening struck our transformer and we lost all power, including our back up generators. It wasn't discovered until the morning when the manager went to open and even then power would not be restored for a full 24 hours. It was a financial nightmare for the store – thousands and thousands of dollars of damaged stock that had been unrefrigerated and gone bad. Still it was kind of fun, tooling around the dark store armed with mini flashlights and Polaroid cameras to document the damage for insurance, hurriedly loading salvageable items into the one refrigerated truck we were able to get, dancing to "Car Wash" by Rose Royce blasting from someone's car stereo as we formed a line brigade to begin chucking spoiled food into the dumpsters, the store owner buying us all pizza and beer for our hard work and setting up a store picnic in the middle of the diaper aisle.

Or the time the boiler in the basement began to hum and shake, causing the entire floor to vibrate and a strange dusty smell to emanate from the basement stairs. Just as we were all starting to glance at each other with that, Do you hear and feel that too? Should we be worried? look, a large BANG caused the entire store to shudder, followed by smoke floating up from the basement and the fire alarms going off. I remember the fear and panic in the manager's eyes as she got on the intercom and said in her best smooth and soothing voice, "Attention all customers, we apologize for the inconvenience but it would appear we have an emergency situation in the store, possibly a fire. Please calmly proceed to the nearest exits. Thank you." And then turning to me, eyes wild and voice shaking, "Get everyone out, get out, get out." Trying to herd customers out the door, most of whom were reluctant to leave because they hadn't finished shopping. "Look," I told a stoner woman insisting on buying cigarettes and Funyuns. "The STORE is on FIRE. You have to leave! NOW. Go to 12th and Maple if you're that desperate!" "I'm not walking all that way!" was her huffy response as she slouched out of the store. Turns out that boiler had actually exploded, and in the explosion several cardboard boxes caught fire. Luckily, because the boiler was in a fairly isolated corner of the basement (and because the fire department got there in record time) it was mostly just smoke and cosmetic damage. After the fire was put out, we all loitered in the parking lot with the firemen. The owner sent over food and drinks for the firefighters from our sister store across town, and we all pounded icy sodas and stood around with shaky knees trying to figure out what to do next. The only reason this story is fun is because no one was hurt and because it was my last day working in the store. "Well," my manager said as I handed in my apron. "You certainly know how to make an exit."

Conforming

OK, fine. I've joined Twitter.

(Mainly I've done this so I can update while I'm in the UK. Lord knows when/where I'll have internet access over there. On Twitter? Help me get settled! I really have no idea what I'm doing.)

Well, now I can breathe easy

All this nonsense in Denver? Puh-Shaw! Pundits? Take a back seat. We have official confirmation that the Weekly World News Alien is supporting Barack Obama.

Note that WWN Alien has correctly predicted every election since 1980.

I'm much cuter in anime

Everyone else on the planet is doing this, so I thought I would too. I wish I lived in an animated world! Also, check out those ta-tas!

40 Sentences

I don't usually go for this sort of thing, but I've been seeing it crop up on other blogs and the answers are fascinating.

1. My uncle once: hitchhiked across America. It was the sixties.

2. Never in my life: have I cheated on a significant other.

3. When I was five: I wanted to marry Michael J. Fox.

4. High school was: retarded. With the exception of band (shut up) and school plays (shut up!), it kind of sucked. Aside from a small circle of friends, people really didn't get me.

5. I will never forget: the words to "Canticle of Zachariah," thanks to the fact that we had to sing it at every single First Friday Adoration at aforementioned high school.

6. Once I met: David Sedaris. I promptly made an ass out of myself. See also: Michael Palin, Michael Showalter.

7. There’s this boy I know: and I totally have a crush on him. But he already has a girlfriend.

8. Once, at a bar: a guy told me that my hair smelled amazing and proceeded to sniff my head.

9. By noon, I’m usually: hungry.

10. Last night: I worked late, attended a softball game, made risotto, half-heartedly tried to do school work, went to bed.

11. If only I had: more confidence in myself.

12. Next time I go to church: it will be for a family function of some sort.

13. What worries me most: is money. Or rather my complete lack thereof.

14. When I turn my head left I see: my reading chair.

15. When I turn my head right I see: a wall with a collage hanging on it.

16. You know I’m lying when: I get the prickles, the blurts and the headlaugh.

17. What I miss most about the Eighties is: dressing up with Erin and dancing to Madonna.

18. If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: someone blinded by love, who is then tragically doomed, like Desdemona.

19. By this time next year: I hope to be getting ready to move to either New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, or London -- somewhere I can be a moderately fabulous publishing goddess.

20. A better name for me would be: Girl With Lots of Insecurities Blithely Trying to Cover it Up With Dorky Behavior. It's my Indian Name, actually.

21. I have a hard time understanding: Republicans.

22. If I ever go back to school, I'll: be one day closer to completing my Master's.

23. You know I like you if: I play with my hair a lot. I completely suck at flirting, so that's the only help you'll get.

24. If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be: my parents. They've been wildly supportive of me and my goals.

25. Take my advice, never: try to take photos in your stocking feet while standing on a leather swivel chair. You will fall.

26. My ideal breakfast is: two eggs over easy with wheat toast and coffee.

27. A song I love but do not have is: "Cha Cha Heels" as sung by Chiwetel Ejiofor in Kinky Boots. Why iTunes, WHY do you not have it?

28. If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: prepare to be bored.

29. Why won’t people: be nice to each other?

30. If you spend a night at my house: you will have your toes tickled/eaten by Dill in the middle of the night.

31. I’d stop my wedding for: an emergency.

32. The world could do without: pollution.

33. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: vote for McCain.

34. My favourite blonde(s) is/are: Daniel Craig.

35. Paper clips are more useful than: gum.

36. If I do anything well it’s: procrastination.

37. I can’t help but: be down on myself a lot of the time.

38. I usually cry: at sappy nonsense. I might be turning into my mother.

39. My advice to my child/nephew/niece: relax, be yourself and have fun.

40. And by the way: I should be kissed, and often. By someone who knows how.

I effing hate Comic Sans

But otherwise, this video is hysterical:

ETA: I tried embedding it, but it makes everything all wonky. Go here instead.

Titanerific and Bottastic!

You guys. I am SO EXCITED right now. Thanks to eagle-eyed Mike over at Renal Failure, I discovered two hugely fabulous things this morning.

1.) The new MST3K site that will be launched in a mere 2 days and which will be the new official site for the show as well as featuring weekly animated 'Bot stories.

AND

2.) Cinematic Titanic, which, yeah. Awesomeness to the 10th power.

This is so going to rule.

Thinking so you don't have to

Well, well, well. I'm a winner! Kwan Yin just tagged me with a thinking blogger award!



So the rules, as I understand them, is to pass this along to 5 bloggers who make me think. Let me just say that it's sort of a shame that Kwan Yin nominated me because I would have nominated her, for sure. As a non-pagan reader, she still manages to make her faith and spirituality accessible, interesting, and thought provoking. I may not have any single denomination that I subscribe to, but she makes me want to continue my search. Anyway, moving on. My five nominees are:

And Shee Was. I adore Renee. She's super smart, sweet, adorable, mini, and brilliant writer. Whether she's writing about her day-to-day, music and pop culture, ranting about boys, or just grooving out, she's a fun read. I also, really, really admire her writing abilities. Oh, and seven years later, I'm still trying to figure out why she's friends with a goober like me.

Schuyler's Monster. I found this blog when it was still under the name of Darn Tootin' and Schuyler was just getting her Big Box of Words. I was hooked instantly and spent days pouring over the archives. To bring you up to speed: The blog is written by Rob, father of the spunky, sprightly Schuyler, who was born with a rare neurological disorder that left her unable to speak. Wait, wait. Before you turn away all, "God, that's depressing," it's really not. Rob manages to write in a way that leaves you inspired and hopeful without being all saccharin sweet glurge. Yeah, life's tough. They deal with it. Reading his blog and watching Schuyler fiercely battle her monster every day (...and win) is just the underlying story. The real story? A dad and super cool daughter, one who wears Chuck Taylors, T-shirts that say "You talk too much," and loves King Kong. Rob has written a book that will be coming out this winter. Needless to say, even though I already know the story, I can't wait to read it. Rob is also a talented and gifted photographer.

Softly, Softly, Catchy Monkey. Stephanie is so, so rad, I don't even know where to begin. Read her blog for quick funny anecdotes, silly stories, and just general awesomeness.

What's Alan Watching? I'm a bit of a TV junkie, Ok? Alan gives thoughtful and insightful reviews of the best shows and what makes him better than any other TV critic is that his writing makes it crystal clear that he loves television. Great fun, even when he reviews the shows I don't watch.

On My Desk. Fascinating looks at what talented creative folks keep on the desks and in their workspaces. From film makers and animators to graphic designers and artists, these glimpses at what these creatives keep around them as they toil never fail to inspire me.

And that's it, friends. Pass it along.

Cheering up, a bit

How could I not, when I've just seen this?

Ann M. Martin -- Literary Genius?

Renee has just introduced me to, what may be, the best blog in existence.

The BSC Headquarters.

Yes. Yes. This is just too awesome for words. Considering I spent a good deal of the third and fourth grade hiding a BSC book under my desk, reading when I should have been learning percentages and decimals (Something I still, to this day, suck at) or about Conrad Wiser's role in the French and Indian war or something, it is only fitting that I now sneak read this blog while I should be doing page proofs.

You can never learn less, you can only learn more

Today I discovered a web zine that, simply put, is probably one of the most inspiring things I've looked at in a long time. Ladies and gentlemen: LAB.

First up, I love that cover. Second, what I enjoy about this zine (still in its "beta" form -- Christ, can you imagine what a non-beta issue will look like?) is that its very accessible in away that my other designery-inspiration zine fave, CANDY*, is not. Like, CANDY* is awesome and all, and amazing to look at, and I love it, but it also has a tendency to come across slightly snooty and cerebral. Like, we are all so creative and smart and making ART here, people. Which, yeah, fine. But LAB is much more along the lines of, yes we're artists and designers, creative and smart, but we're also having fun and you should too. And there seems to be this very conscious effort for LAB to be about learning in addition to inspiring. I've just read through two interviews and both of the interviewers make the point of asking questions along the lines of how did you do this/what to you use/what's your advice questioning instead of the tongue bath that CANDY* interviewers give to the designers they feature. I know it sounds like I'm bashing CANDY* a lot here, but I'm not. I love CANDY*, it's really fantastic. It's just on a different level than LAB, and I'm sort of enjoying the simplicity and level of LAB right now. So yes, check it out.

Voxxy Lady

So, remember last semester how I was doing that Photo fiction thing? Only I sort of sucked at it because two entries in I realized that trying to make up 4-5 fictional pieces a week was going to kill me so I abandoned it and used this blog for the class instead? Ok, maybe you don't exactly remember that part, but that's totally what happened. And I have every intention of going back and working on that photo fiction stuff again. When I have more time. And, uh, talent. Because it's a cool idea and I think it could make an interesting series if I ever get my ass in gear.

Anyhoodle, this semester I'm taking a Creative Nonfiction writing workshop. Which is very good for me because it will allow me to get over my damn self and start getting work Out There and whatnot. And I have no choice but to produce writing, or else I'll fail. So! On that note, I'm going to be posting stuff over at my Vox Blog available for critique and comments. Which, don't feel obligated, but if you want to, cool.

The first piece I've posted is an exercise we did to focus in on either character, setting or dialogue. Fair warning: Already I have an inkling that much of the writing I produce for this class may be Doc/cancer related as I try to get all of that nonsense out of my system.

A final of errors

So remember how in my last post I was all, "Wah wah wah, I suck, blah blah blah self-doubt cakes, at least I have until Wednesday to finish"? Yeah, that was a nice story. Then I woke up on Tuesday and realized that 19th was on Tuesday and not Wednesday like I had mistakenly thought.

And then I freaked the fuck out.

I was able to calm down relatively quickly, though, because after I posted Monday night I was able to pull myself together and get a lot done. I was still having problems with CSS and Java Script, but really those parts were just gravy. So Tuesday morning, I took quick stock: I had pretty much an entire website ready to go. I was only missing a links page (easy) and the gallery, which yeah, not happening as I still don't understand SQL stuff. The page wouldn't be as pretty as I pictured in my mind's eye, but it would be nicer than the current Inis Nua site and it would be a fully functioning website. All I had to do was export it and upload it.

Now, like I said, technically I didn't even have to make a full working website for my final. But this was a final I was looking forward to and I wanted to do really well on it...I had thought I would make this awesome site, impress my professor, get an A++ and then go on to academic power and glory, or whatever. But the fates were against me. Because this is how Tuesday went:

Shit. Today's the 19th. I'm fucked.

Oh God, how am I this dumb?

Ok, wait. It's not that bad. I can totally do this. Make links page, clear away useless script coding, upload, Miller Time. Sack up, ho, and get to work.

OK, links page made. Coding cleared. Let's export!

Let's upload!

Uhhh....hmm.

OK, that's never happened to me before.

Let's try again.

And again.

And one more time.

Shit. Ok, well, I have actual work to do at my job. I'll try again later.

OK, here we go...it will work this time.

Or not.

DAMMMIT, WORK.

I wonder if the IT guy here can help me?

Yeah, not so much help there, buddy. Thanks for nuttin.

Bite me, Fetch.

OK, this thing was supposed to be handed in, like an hour ago. I'm fucked.

OK, emailed professor. All cool. I will use built-in FTP client thingy in Adobe GoLive on laptop when I get home. That will work.

Wait, what happened to the buttons on my banner? Why are they suddenly not working?

Waaaaaittt, no no no no! Ah, shit.

OK, let's force quit that nonsense and try again.

Goddamnit, why aren't you recognizing the link slices?

Oh, that's why. I'm a tool. Never mind.

I hate you.

I hate you.

I hate me.

I love Kelly, though, how did she know I needed a glass of wine?

Chardonay!

All right, this is it. Everything good? All right. Site, prepare to be uploaded!

Ta-Da!

Wait, what? Why are you doing that?

Oh my GOD, that looks awful. Why is that happening?

Maybe it's the layers. I'll delete them.

Ok, maybe it's the cell padding on the tables.

OK, maybe it's...I don't know what the hell it is.

OK, let's look at the source code.

You tell me nothing, source code.

Oh God, what do I do now?

I wonder if I can get Kelly to get me a refill on that wine. Wait, no, FOCUS.

Maybe I just need to quit, open up again, re-export and upload.

WHY DO YOU HATE ME, INTERNET, WHEN I'VE SHOWN YOU NOTHING BUT LOVE?!?!

---

Around 10:30 I finally admitted defeat. I would not have a fully functioning website for my professor. Instead, I exported all the Adobe GoLive stuff into a PDF and reworked the entire final to be handed in that way. I took a break around midnight for some dinner and then finally completed everything around 1:30ish.

I sent it off. Hopefully, I won't have too many points docked for lateness since I emailed the professor to tell her it would be late. Better or worse though, it's done and out there. Now I need a web genius to help me fix and get up the actual site.

Semester is over, bitches. Let the revelry begin.